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00:00Hang on, is that the same color as my shirt? Almost color matching with my MacBook there. Hey guys
00:05I'm Tom from Tech Chap, and this is the brand spanking new MacBook Air M2
00:10I've had this for a little over a week now, and I've got some thoughts as you might expect
00:14Although there were a few things that kind of struck me when I first got this unboxed and started using it
00:19Firstly, I love how we get this color matched MagSafe cable, which goes with my shirt
00:23I mean my laptop, very classy. Second, this new midnight color is gorgeous
00:28But also an absolute fingerprint and smudge magnet. Either bring a microfiber cloth with you or perhaps go for a starlight instead
00:38Thirdly, where did the MacBook Air logo go?
00:40Is this one of the upgrades? And finally, and possibly a little bit more seriously, if you've already got a MacBook Air M1
00:46This will feel very very familiar
00:49It's much more of a refinement than a revolution like we saw going from the Intel to M1 MacBook Air in 2020
00:57Now if you have been living under a rock for the last month or so
01:01Let me give you a quick recap of this and first if I move my little plants out the way
01:06Let's also bring in the MacBook Air M1
01:09Because while this is an incredible laptop in its own right, you can't consider that without also considering this
01:15It's its predecessor and also competitor
01:18So if you're happy to pay the extra $200 or 250 pounds over the M1 Air
01:23Then you can bag yourself one of these with the new M2 chip, faster memory, a slightly bigger and brighter screen, a 1080p
01:31FaceTime camera, a new quad speaker setup with support for Apple's spatial audio
01:35The function row on the top of the keyboard is now full-size. The touchpad is a tiny bit bigger
01:40We now get MagSafe charging, a slightly longer battery life, a couple of new colors and quite a substantial redesign
01:47It's a touch thinner and lighter overall
01:49But Apple's done away with the Air's classic tapered look and so instead the M2 Air now more closely resembles the MacBook Pro 14
01:57It is still a fanless design though, which means it's completely silent
02:02So there are some genuinely nice upgrades here and I reckon this probably is the ultimate thin and light laptop
02:07But this is also the most expensive MacBook Air ever at £1,250
02:13There are student discounts
02:14But it does beg the question, has it become too expensive and is, as I say, the MacBook Air M1
02:21Still the better option? Well, to be fair
02:24I think when you take into account the Windows competition and also the quality of the laptop you're getting for this kind of money
02:29It's not unreasonable
02:31But I just think it's that pesky M1 Air that starts at $999
02:34That's really throwing a bit of a spanner in the works
02:36And on the other side if you go for the more expensive 10-core GPU option or you start adding more RAM or more storage
02:43Which honestly I don't think I'd really recommend because then you're getting very close to MacBook Pro 14 territory
02:49Which gets you that 120 Hertz ProMotion screen. It's mainly LED. It supports HDR
02:54So it gets a lot brighter you get way more ports and the M1 Pro is still significantly more powerful
03:00But let's put pricing to one side for a second and focus on some of the upgrades and a key one is this webcam
03:05so this is being shot on the new 1080p webcam on the MacBook Air M2 and
03:10This is what you're getting on the current M1 Air with its 720p webcam now
03:15It's a pretty significant difference particularly in lower light
03:18I noticed there's a lot less noise and of course being high resolution
03:21It is sharper or more detailed just looking at the screens really my face looks really yellow and very soft on the air
03:28M1 versus a much more clear and slightly more natural looking M2
03:34However with the oncoming Mac OS Ventura software and if you pair it with an iPhone running iOS 16
03:40You can use new continuity cameras. You can basically use your iPhone as a really high quality webcam on top of your Mac
03:46It's a bit fussy
03:47But if you are taking regular important video calls
03:50You can just strap your phone to your MacBook Air M1 instead perhaps and save some money
03:55Let's talk about design because while the new MacBook Air may not look as futuristic as something like this the Dell XPS 13 Plus
04:03Do let me know if you'd like to see a full versus video with these two by the way
04:06But I would still take the MacBook notch and all simply because of that keyboard that touchpad and that webcam
04:12Which are pretty much the best you can get right now
04:15So the M2 Air is now a uniform 11.3 mil thick and also tips of scales at 1.24
04:21Kilograms, which actually makes it 50 grams lighter than the M1 Air
04:26So this is a great size for students for taking it to the office or just moving it around the house with you as you
04:31pretend to work from home as
04:33Usual it is made from a single unibody piece of aluminium or aluminum for my American friends
04:39But the most important question is what color would you go for and between the two new ones starlight or midnight?
04:44I reckon I made the right choice here with midnight. Although as you can see it is very bluish when it hits the light
04:51It's not like a matte black
04:52Completely. It's like a nice sort of slate gray blue to it. Very nice
04:56Although as you can see very smudgy as well
04:59The only minor compromise with this design is the fact that we get this chunky notch that jerks out from the top of the screen
05:05Although it does mean we get that top-notch webcam
05:09I'll stop but Mac OS does utilize the screen space. It pushes everything up. So we get the mini bar up here now
05:15So that 13.6 inch screen is a little bit bigger than 13.3 on the M1 Air
05:21And also when you're watching movies and TV, it's blacked out anyway by the letterboxing
05:26Although unlike the inky blacks on the mini LED MacBook Pro screens
05:30the physically black notch does stand out from the
05:34Darkish gray letterboxing of that LCD screen and to be fair as 60 Hertz LCD non-touch screen for
05:421250 pounds in 2022 is starting to feel a little bit old hat now
05:49But the combination of the slightly bigger screen thanks to the thinner bezels and the extra space we get around the notch
05:55The slightly increased brightness also the fact that this supports now 1 billion colors
06:00So in theory, we should see a smoother gradation between different colors on screen
06:04Although I've been watching some stuff side-by-side
06:06It's kind of hard to tell but a professional may be able to tell so it is still a very good screen
06:11It's color accurate. It gets quite bright
06:13I think the resolution which works out to be roughly quad HD is a really good balance
06:17for sharpeners and battery life at this screen size
06:20But I do think when you consider the Windows competition and the fact you can get an Asus Vivo book with an OLED screen for
06:27Like 450 pounds now high refresh mini LED OLED options. I do kind of wish we'd seen a bigger upgrade for the display
06:34We do also get the same two Thunderbolt USB 4 ports
06:37But now the three and a half mil jack supports high impedance headphones one for the audio files there
06:43And of course, we now get MagSafe which obviously frees up one of your USB ports from charging
06:48The downside is we are still limited to one external display on the MacBook Air if you do want a multi monitor setup
06:55Then you'll have to go for a pro 14 or 16. Although you could always output to one monitor and sidecar with your iPad
07:03I've also got this guy. It's the new 35 watt dual charger. So rather than one USB C on the back
07:09You've got two so you can plug in your iPad and your MacBook and it supports dynamic charging
07:13So it will charge them both equally until one's complete and then it'll switch over and although this is 35 watts
07:19It will charge the air at the same rate as the standard 30 watt charger that you get bundled
07:24this is normally a 30 pound optional extra unless you go for a slightly higher spec model in which case this or
07:30The 67 watt fast charger is free, which will actually top this up from 0 to 50 in about half an hour
07:36I think I'd probably go for that over the flexibility of the extra USB C ports, but it's nice to have the option
07:43Let's say that was very very impressive what you did back there. Let's say that was very very impressive what you did back there
07:50The m2 air also gets an upgraded quad speaker setup and while they do sound good and are certainly among the better
07:57Speaker systems you can get on a laptop this size. I was a little bit disappointed
08:00It wasn't a particularly noticeable improvement over the m1 air
08:04You can hear a touch more bass and also there's a little bit more clarity at higher volumes
08:09But really there's not much in it and both the airs are blown away by the MacBook Pro 14
08:14So the speakers are a tiny bit better and we've got the new high impedance
08:18Three and a half mil headphone jack, but I think the biggest upgrade for audio is the fact that this now supports Apple's spatial sound
08:25so if you pair it with a pair of
08:26AirPods or recent Apple or even beats earphones and you're watching a video or movie or even a FaceTime call that supports it
08:33You can essentially get Dolby Atmos spatial sound so it sounds a lot more immersive
08:39Okay, so far so good, but let's talk about the headline upgrade that new m2 chip
08:44I think it's fair to say that that transition from Intel to
08:47Apple's own silicon with the m1 a couple of years ago was probably the biggest leap forward
08:51We saw for laptops in the last 10 years or so the jump up to m2
08:56However is nowhere near as significant, but we're still looking at a roughly 20 to 30 percent boost over the n1
09:03Which is a nice little optic and also with the addition of the media engine
09:07Which until now was reserved only for the m1 pro and m1 max if you are video editing
09:11This will have a big impact on that performance as well
09:13But outside of that and shaving a few minutes off an export or a render
09:17There's nothing the m2 air can do that the m1 air
09:20can't and if you are concerned about performance and perhaps you're looking at going for more powerful 10 core GPU or up to 24 gigs
09:28Of unified memory if those performance so questions are whirring around in your brain again
09:33This is not the one for you get the m1 pro in the 14 of the 16
09:37So here are a few of my benchmark results and actually we're looking at only between sort of 7 and 18 percent boost
09:44In these two tests to be fair though traditional benchmarks
09:47Don't really paint the full picture of the faster neural processing the extra media engine the higher bandwidth unified memory all that
09:55Apple stuff and so bringing in the premier pro Puget test the m2 scored
10:0035% higher and in my 5-minute 4k h264 export test the m2 shaved off over two and a half minutes
10:07Making it around 30% faster and then in Lightroom with my photo export test
10:12It was over 30% quicker even shadow of the Tomb Raider was a playable 42 FPS
10:18So regular games if I can call them that definitely play better on the m2, but you're still limited by what's available on Mac
10:24So really your best bets for gaming are to dive into the Apple arcade or streaming with GeForce now or Xbox
10:31Just pair a controller. Make sure you've got a fast internet connection and away you go
10:35Day-to-day with app loading times desktop use, you know normal stuff
10:39There's nothing really between them
10:41But if you push it harder and more demanding apps
10:43You will see a small but noticeable benefit with the m2 and also so far at least I haven't experienced the out of memory
10:51Pop-up that has come up a couple of times for me on the m1 in the past
10:54So I reckon you're good to stick with the 8 gigs
10:57So this really is an incredibly powerful laptop for its size and of course being fanless
11:02It doesn't make a noise at all. Although I did find it got quite warm underneath when I was rendering or gaming
11:09But but but but but the real surprise for me was that despite the bigger screen despite that extra 25 odd percent
11:17Increase in performance. I also got a longer battery with this
11:21Even Apple says they should be about the same between the m1 and m2 as and according to them only the m2 pro 13 can
11:28Last a couple extra hours
11:29Well, I can tell you that five hours of YouTube on the m2 air in Safari and at 50% brightness use
11:3535% of the battery which means a whopping 15 hours should be achievable
11:40But I can also tell you that in my slightly more realistic
11:44Rundown test of YouTube Premiere file cut Lightroom websites Google Docs Apple TV FaceTime
11:49The m1 air lasted 8 hours and 50 and the m2 air lasted 10 hours 15
11:56In fact, the m2 still had 10% of his battery left when the m1 died
12:01You can get an extra about an hour on the m2 over the m1
12:05So while the m2 is still based on the same 5 nanometer
12:09architecture clearly those efficiency gains the
12:12Faster unified memory it all comes together and we're getting well a faster longer lasting laptop
12:18That's also brighter with a slightly bigger screen as well. Not too shabby
12:22Okay, so let's wrap this up and as I said the beginning if you do already own an m1 air you do not need
12:27To buy this
12:28however
12:28If you are after a new thin and light laptop for emails Netflix a bit of work and you just want yourself a slightly nicer
12:34Air experience then yeah, get yourself the new MacBook air m2. You're not gonna be disappointed
12:40It is a fantastic laptop, but personally I wouldn't bother paying extra for more RAM more storage or the higher core GPU
12:46I know I keep coming back to this but then the 14-inch Pro makes more sense. Sorry. What's that?
12:52What about the new Pro 13 with the m2 for a hundred quid more you can get the MacBook Pro 13 m2
12:58But it's the old design. It still has a touch bar. It's got the rubbish webcam
13:02I wouldn't really recommend it in its favor
13:04It does have a fan so you're gonna get slightly better sustained performance
13:07And also Apple say it should have a little bit of a longer battery life, but this already lasts basically forever
13:12Anyway, so outside of a very niche group of people who really want the old-style
13:17MacBook with a touch bar and definitely have to have a fan. No one should really consider the 13-inch m2
13:23But what about you though?
13:24If you are thinking about upgrading
13:26do you have your heart set on the new m2 or you're gonna save a few quid with the m1 or pay a bit more for
13:31The 14 or none of the above let me know in the comments below and also again apologies for a somewhat slightly sweaty
13:38And horsey Tom because I'm still pretty unwell with kovat, but nothing will stop me making videos nothing
13:43So if you did enjoy this then a cheeky little like and subscribe would be very much appreciated
13:47And I'll catch you next time right here on the tech chat